Looking to improve a Hyperion Planning application or streamline the data mapping process? Concerned about the integrity of your organization’s financial data as it is collected and shared across departments?  The following is some expert advice to streamline data integration using Hyperion Financial Data Quality Management (FDM), eliminate the more common frustrations, and maximize the return on your organization’s investment.

1. Whether the data source for the application is a text file or an integration script to directly query a table, cleansing the source is extremely important.  If the source is a text file, a CSV, for example, unique characters within any field can create several issues, including records being ignored (no error provided) during the load process and data in the target system ultimately left inaccurate.  Some of the more common characters include quotations (single and double) or commas while more obscure ones may include carriage returns or non-breaking spaces.  If an integration script is used, on the other hand, field lengths of the source can create errors during Import.  For example, the Account Description within FDM is restricted to 75 characters, and can be used to load transaction-level detail or description to the FDM repository.  However, often times, this detail exceeds such restriction.  As a result, Workflow in FDM will fail during Import, with an, “ORA-12899: Value Too Large for Column” error.  In order to avoid such errors, ensure the field length in the source table or view is defined as 75 characters.
2. Maintain the Entity dimension of the target application to keep it as up-to-date as possible.  As with any data integration process, data load errors are never welcomed and should be avoided.  Within FDM, in particular, such data load errors can create frustration and consume valuable time, especially as they pertain to Entity members.  The reason?  During Export, FDM actually first clears all intersections of Category, Period, and Entity in the target application based on the source records.  Therefore, on the first record referencing a member that does not exist in the target Entity dimension, the Export immediately fails before ever loading data.  The error file thus details only that one particular record and the single Entity that caused the issue.  This type of one-by-one logging will continue until all source Entities are recognized in the target application.  Due to how FDM processes records, closely maintaining the Entity dimension is key to successful and simplified data integration.
3. For Hyperion Financial Data Quality Management – Version 11.1.2.1, the Workbench client and the Web client are two administrative tools.  Generally, an FDM application can be created using either utility; however, if FDM Workbench is installed on Microsoft Windows x64 2008 R2 Server, it is not possible to create a new application using Workbench.  The process will create the application folder but never complete.  This is a documented bug by Oracle, and can be resolved by either creating the application using the Web client of applying the patch 12795642.

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